


keys

by ssstrychnine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam struggles with the different places he lives, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 22:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7139504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I should go,” says Adam, but he doesn’t move.</p>
<p>“You should stay,” says Ronan, but his fingers still in Adam’s hair. </p>
<p>“You’re stupid,” says Opal, pulling the wings off a dead fly. Adam isn’t sure who she’s talking to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keys

Over the summer, Adam continues to stay at St Agnes. It’s an absurd thought, to move to the Barns immediately, within months of a first kiss, eighteen years old and headed for college in another state soon anyway. He keeps St Agnes and he leaves the Barns at midnight every night like he might turn into a pumpkin if he’s late. It’s stark and bare in a way that never bothered him before, because it was _his_ stark and bare, but it bothers him now. It pulls sweat from every pore and plasters his hair to his forehead and it bothers him because somehow the Barns is always the perfect temperature. 

“Did you dream the air here?” he asks Ronan one night. They are sitting on the deck, watching Opal try to catch flying insects before they kill themselves on light bulbs. Adam’s head is in Ronan’s lap. Ronan’s hands are in Adam’s hair. He laughs and Adam can feel it at the core of him. 

“Nope,” he says. “Maybe my dad did.” He says it like it might be true too, like Niall Lynch could dream up the atmosphere, a perfect summer night, and then Adam thinks that maybe _his_ father dreamed up the space Adam takes up in the world. The atoms that touch his skin, the edges of him and the strange nothing feeling he has about his body. A feeling like moving through sand, like if he opened his mouth the earth would fall down his throat.

“I should go,” he says, but he doesn’t move.

“You should stay,” says Ronan, but his fingers still in Adam’s hair. 

“You’re stupid,” says Opal, pulling the wings off a dead fly. Adam isn’t sure who she’s talking to. 

He leaves, like he does every night, and he doesn’t even leave a shoe behind because he only has three pairs and the other two are boots for work and second-hand dress-shoes, immaculately kept, for the things Gansey invites him to. None of them are expendable, not even for a fairy tale. Ronan kisses him before he goes, pressed against the door of the Hondayota, away from the disgusted expression Opal puts on every time they kiss around her. Adam kisses him back, holds him still with one hand at his collarbone, the skin just under the edges of his t-shirt, and one at the back of his neck, fingertips scraping across the sharp, close-to-needing-a-cut, bristles of his hair. 

When he drives away he imagines that the air changes as soon as he crosses the property line. The hot suffocating air of the real-world summer comes back, thick with insects. The air at the Barns feels the way Ronan’s ghost lights look, soft and alien-sharp and alien-strange and beautiful. Ronan has that too, he is as dangerous and lovely as the magic he inherited. St Agnes is starting to feel unreal already, like part of the dream-life Adam had before Ronan woke him up. Days and months and years of working and working and not sleeping and working. 

But Adam knows not to pin every good thing he has now on one person, unless it is himself. He has got to where he is by himself and he will continue by himself. His life before wasn't a waking dream, it was just a life without a certain sort of person in it. A certain sort of BMW driving, foul-mouthed dream-thief person in it. There is just a different shape to it now. 

He toys with giving Ronan a key to St Agnes, even though he won’t be there much longer, because he thinks Ronan would like it. But he also thinks that Ronan likes Sundays, after church, kicking at Adam’s door in a wonky tie and a sloppy shirt, smiling like a sinner. So he keeps the only key and lets Ronan kick and St Agnes stays theirs in different ways. 

“St Agnes is patron saint of chastity and gardeners,” Ronan tells him, one of these days, lying on his bed, drawing spirals in the air. “And if that’s not you, fuck knows what is.”

“It fits Blue better,” says Adam, shoving him over to claim back bedspace. “I'm not _chaste_.”

“Stay the night at the Barns then.”

“Stay the night here.”

“I do, I _have_.”

“Not since before.”

Ronan huffs in frustration, flicks a fingernail against Adam’s temple, growls his displeasure against Adam’s neck. 

“You can pay me rent,” he says, voice muffled by skin. “You can have Declan’s room if you want.”

“Opal has Declan’s room,” says Adam. “Anyway, it's not about that it’s-”

But he can't explain it in a way that’s satisfying to Ronan. It’s something to do with not being at college yet, some arbitrary importance he’s placed in not cancelling a lease until he’s signed his name to another. He doesn't want to feel cut loose, like he’s drifting through life without a plan. Technically he’s already signed his name to a dorm room but he knows it won’t feel real until he’s there. He’d left his parents without knowing where he would go and it had come close to ruining him. 

“Whatever,” says Ronan, turning over, throwing his arm across Adam’s waist and burying his face in Adam’s pillow. “It doesn’t matter.”

Then college comes and it seems suddenly ridiculous. Adam ends his St Agnes tenancy and moves into the dorms with its kitset furniture and a roommate called Ji-hoon who is quiet sometimes and sharply funny other times. It’s not so terrible. He’s not cut loose. He misses the Barns fiercely. The first weekend he is back he goes straight there and Ronan is at the top of the porch stairs, waiting for him like he’s been stood there growing moss for six weeks, and Adam kisses him, wraps himself up in him even though he’s been driving for hours and smells like stale sweat and the crappy pine air freshener he hung from his car’s mirror. 

“Gross,” says Opal around a mouthful of what looks like peanut butter and chocolate. 

“Fix your face,” says Ronan, poking at one of her bulging cheeks. She grins, all teeth and mess, and then runs back into the house. 

Ronan turns back to Adam, lets go of him, steps back. He looks different, even though it’s only been a few weeks. He looks less like he wants to fight everything he touches and more like he might one day be comfortable in his own skin, though it’s still a long way off. Adam wonders if he’s changed much.

“You look studious,” says Ronan, which doesn’t answer anything.

“You look like a farmer,” says Adam, which is true, and Ronan grins. “Can I stay here tonight?” 

Ronan’s smile fades a little, turns from midday to sunset, and Adam’s stomach is tied in knots. It’s ridiculous, all of it, not wanting to stay, thinking it meant letting go of himself just wanting to be with his boyfriend. Or maybe it’s not, maybe he’s just young and maybe he’s never felt comfortable anywhere either. 

“Come on,” says Ronan, taking Adam by the hand, tugging him inside and down the hall and to his room. Adam hardly has time to catch his breath before Ronan is opening a drawer and it’s full of keys, a hundred of them at least, maybe more. Ronan lets go of his hand. Adam picks one up, black like it’s been cut from night, and another one, moonglow white. There are keys with bells attached to them, keys with feathers, keys with knife blade edges that don’t look like keys at all but they must be, to be in this drawer. 

“I dream one every night, sometimes more,” says Ronan, sheepishly, rubbing at his head. “They all work. I’m always home so it’s never locked but... just in case.” 

“That’s...” 

“ _Embarrassing_ ,” Ronan barks. “Fucking... stupid. I guess I thought you wouldn’t let me get you a key cut.” 

“I could do it myself.”

“Yeah, well, now you don’t have to.” 

Adam drops the keys he’s holding back into the drawer. He wants to take them all, line them up as evidence, proof that Adam Parrish can be loved. He closes the drawer and turns to Ronan, more proof. He doesn’t say anything, just takes one of Ronan’s hands, turns it over and over in his, lets it go. Runs his hands down over Ronan’s shoulders, his biceps, his elbows, his forearms, his hands again. He has missed the shape of him, the way Ronan fit into his life, into his thoughts, against his body. A key in a lock. He sighs. 

“You win,” he says, because he knows Ronan will like it. 

“Of course I do,” says Ronan, because he knows Adam will like it. 

Adam stays that night, and the next. They all make dinner together and Adam teaches Opal a poem he’s studying and she doesn’t like it but recites it with her feet together and her hands behind her back. Ronan rolls his eyes. Adam sleeps in Ronan’s room, in Ronan’s bed, overlapping space and limbs and heartbeats and t-shirts. Ronan dreams him another key that night, practical and plain, and Adam takes that one because it was made with both of them there. 

“Keep the rest in the drawer,” he says, before he leaves on the Sunday afternoon.

“Fuck Parrish, putting your shit in my drawers already,” says Ronan, but gently.

They are standing on the deck and it’s uncomfortably hot and Adam is glad for it. Not everything at the Barns is perfect. He presses his thumb against the teeth of the new key in his pocket. Ronan kisses him, kisses him again, like he’s trying to take as many as he can before he leaves. Adam touches the corner of his mouth, his lower lip, then kisses the places he leaves fingerprints. 

“I’ll come visit,” says Ronan.

“You’ll hate it.”

Ronan shrugs, puts his hands in his pockets, squints out across a thousand shades of green and brown and sky. 

“Nah,” he says. “You’ll be there.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! ![visit me on tumblr if you like.](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com) also idk shit about term times in the states but whatever. it's summer and then like.. a little bit post-summer i suppose.


End file.
